A customer recently upgraded from a Samsung SSD from a 250GB to a 500GB version to get more space. The upgrade with Samsung Migration software went smoothly and everything was working fine—except external USB drives.
Keyboard and mouse were working fine, but any external USB devices attached (whether an extension cable, a hub, or a Samsung thumb drive) were showing up as unavailable:
Further examination showed the ambiguous “Error 10” issue, but driver installation and device uninstall/reinstall did not help.
The user mentioned that he had installed Samsung Magician before upgrading. I opened Magician and was surprised to discover that it could not detect the brand new Samsung drive as a Samsung SSD, although it still showed the serial number. I confirmed within Magician that it was the latest version of Magician.
On the Samsung SSD FAQ page, there is a section titled, “SSD Samsung Magician does not detect my SSD. What should I do?” It mentions incompatibility with AMD chipsets and some storage device controllers. Even though this Asus Sabertooth Z87 motherboard has an Intel chipset, I don’t recognize the storage controller shown in the device manager. I decided to try uninstalling Samsung Magician.
Voila! After uninstalling Samsung Magician and rebooting, the USB devices are working again.